The Importance of a National Education Policy

The Sri Lankan national education policy suffers from serious lapses from its very beginning: there is a rat race among the parents to admit their children to a well reputed national school leading to a loophole of  endless crimes varying from forged documents to sexual bribery. The next chaotic juncture is in grade five where the children are excruciatingly penalised if they fail at the government scholarship examination. The O/L and A/L s are a also bit of a hectic period in a student's life in Sri Lanka. In addition to the serious lapses of Sri Lankan education system including parroting/cramming exams and procrastination at the end of each term, lack of institutional space to think freely and criticise the subject matter, what seems to be the darkest of the dark errors seems to be the lack of guidance given at school to pursue their education. The world is not what it used to be thirty twenty or at least ten years ago. To be a doctor if you do bio, an engineer from math classes, an accountant from commerce or a lawyer from the arts stream are a bygone dream that belonged to an older generation. I really appreciate doctors, engineers, accountants or lawyers and I know these professions are reserved fro the intellectual cream of this country who makes number of sacrifices to get to these dream jobs!!😀 But the problem here is the taken for granted narrative that you-are-good-for-nothing-if-you-cant-get-one-of-these-dream-jobs. The eighth President of Sri Lanka, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapakse, has recently acknowledged that the service of a well trained and well educated agriculturist is of far more importance than even that of a doctor (this is not at all to depreciate the priceless service of medical staff who does a commendable job in National Health Service) once the prices of the vegetables skyrocketed during Maha season of this fertile island nation. His remark alone is an eye-opener to the educationists or officials who are responsible for the education policies. This country is in dire need of a central mechanism  which analyses the demand and supply of the job market in the services, agriculture and industrial sectors. Thousands of jobs seem to exist in Sri Lanka vacant for which employers are short of skillful candidates to meet the job description.  We also need to discard this government-job-for-every-graduate hysteria: the state (or even private) universities should exist for the sake of expanding the boundaries of knowledge. The reason for absorbing a handful amount of students to the state universities is enabling them to do research to find unknown territories in the realm of knowledge. Therefore, it will be a far cry if the graduates are trained for jobs like machines whereas their knowledge and academic discipline will be much useful where they matter most. What I am again trying to highlight is a well trained, educated and humane panel of educationists who can function as the central body of designing, executing and monitoring a fully-fledged education policy considering the dynamics of the demand and supply in the job market. Perhaps the vocational training centres might have the biggest say in this professional skills-oriented job market in the services sector, which can be elevated to the status of 'colleges' in India or the United States of America. While these colleges can be open to people who are more concerned on jobs in the professional world, the intelligentsia can be saved for its true purpose. I am not even trying to criticise our Chairman of Election Commisision, Mr. Mahinda Deshapriya, who holds a honours degree in chemistry from the University of Peradeniya. There is no question as to whether he is doing a commendable job in his capacity of Chairman of the Election Commission, an independent government institution that matters a lot in determining the future of this island nation, but for a minute think what he could have bestowed to this country had he become a professor in Chemistry or any science related discipline, where he would have excelled with his genius and at the expense of  four year special academic knowledge of the degree programme to which he enlisted. 

Chandula Arsakulasuriya